La Manuelita was founded in 1973 in Sant’Elpidio a Mare from the will of the Torresi family.

A family-owned company that adopts the typical business model of “diffuse factory” of the footwear district of Fermo and Macerata.

Producing and selling women’s shoes under its own brand, it was able to expand its business throughout the national territory.

The detachment from this original organisational and business model takes shape in 2005, with the transfer of the activities in the large plant in Grottazzolina. In the new headquarters, La Manuelita start a major reorganisation at a corporate, managerial and commercial levels, that brings most of the stages of the supply chain and associated processes within the factory.

That same year La Manuelita became a managerial production company, thanks to the achievement of a futuristic, yet concrete, vision.

In 2007 the company strengthen its positioning through the integration of advanced technologies and machinery; La Manuelita is thus able to emerge in the segment of luxury footwear and is able to dedicate to the production for other Brands, starting collaborative relationships that are still in existence with prestigious brands at the top of the Prêt-à-Porter and Haute Couture. First and foremost Azzedine Alaïa, of which La Manuelita is one of the main manufacturers in Italy.

For Giambattista Valli, Versace, Cesare Paciotti and Tommy Hilfiger, a partnership agreement was signed, which puts Progetto in charge of taking care of the study, development, design and industrialisation of the footwear: from the sketch, to the prototype, to the sample, to the production, guaranteeing all the required technical support, starting from the choice of materials, to the volumes and shapes of the shoe, creating the first prototypes in 3D.

La Manuelita, to date, manages to stand out in the market because it is able to follow the client from the design phase to the finished shoe, all within its structure.
It has been defined innovative not because it has been able to create something different at the product level, but for being innovate in terms of processes, methods and structures. Advanced and pioneering technologies applied within the footwear industry are the distinctive plus of La Manuelita.

An emblem of the company is the internal, all-italian Research and Design Centre: Progetto. This Business Unit of La Manuelita was founded with the goal of devising advanced solutions for the development of the footwear design, from the prototype to the sample, by engineering and automating the processes, through the application of digital technologies to the research and development of industrial processes , with a key focus on quality, costs and timing.

The development of robotics applied to women’s footwear in its various heel heights and the digitisation of industrial processes, still unknown to the the world of footwear, make La Manuelita a revolutionary and pioneering company, which however does not forget its own history to draw all the benefits from its experience. The managerial approach combined with the research and the planning, give the guarantee of the perfection of detail even on the single pair of shoes, including custom made footwear.

This business orientation leads to the natural importance given to personnel training, which is another distinguishing feature of La Manuelita: constant and continuous, always keeping up with the innovative philosophy, which is also reflected in the organisation of specific courses inside the company, that currently provides employment to 65 people, plus several external collaborators.